Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“What does Manhattan even signify anymore?” she said. “Certainly not what it did twenty-five years ago. Now it’s an island of wealthy people shopping in the same stores you can find in San Francisco and London and Dubai. Look around you, Russell. Look at the shiny condos going up all around us, crowding out the middle class and your old bohemians, blocking out the sunlight. I want you to grow up and get serious about this. We need to start looking for another place to live, and if you can’t face up to that, I’ll start looking on my own.”

What he wanted to say was that being a resident not only of Manhattan but of downtown was an irreducible core of his identity. He was as much — if not more — a New Yorker as those who found themselves here through the accident of birth, through no inclination or effort of their own, he and his tribe of restless striving immigrants from the provinces and the farthest corners of the earth, who’d been inexorably drawn here and had made the city their own, who’d shaped it and been shaped by it. And for Russell, New York was downtown Manhattan: Greenwich Village, SoHo, TriBeCa. He could even imagine a case being made for Chelsea or the Flatiron District. He refused to believe that the city no longer had room for people like themselves, refused to concede New York to the Power and Money team. It needed the Art and Love team, goddamn it: actors who were not yet famous; used bookstores and the people who worked in them, and professional waiters and dog walkers and piano tuners. It needed bassoon players and chorus line dancers as well as the corps de ballet, watchmakers and furniture restorers and cobblers and dealers in rare coins and stamps. It needed underpaid blue bloods with degrees from Brown who fed the undernourished, and midwestern refugees who published literary fiction. It needed them. This was the city he’d chosen of all the places in the world; to live anywhere else would feel like exile.

“I’M DESPERATE TO SEE YOU,” Luke said.

Dying to see you was a cliché, but desperate gave her pause. That sounded sincere. She must be desperate herself to be taking Luke’s call in the bedroom, with Russell and the kids only a few yards away, but it was Valentine’s Day, after all. Luke was visiting his daughter up at Vassar; he was calling to tell Corrine he wanted to take her away the following weekend.

“Can you at least tell me our destination? I can’t just run off without saying where I’m going.”

“Let’s say winter wonderland. Pack some warm clothes. And your birthday suit.”

“What are you — twelve years old? I mean, who even says ‘birthday suit’?”

“Deeply smitten middle-aged men, apparently.”

“I can’t just disappear for a whole weekend.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a family.” Even as she said it, she was thinking more about logistics than about morality, wondering if she could pull it off.

After they hung up, she called Casey, who had a house in Connecticut, where, theoretically, they might spend a girls’ weekend.

“I can’t believe you lecture me about Washington and now you want me to be your alibi for a dirty weekend with Luke.”

“First off, I didn’t lecture you. I just told you I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.”

“Well, if you get Washington to call me, I’ll cover for you.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“ Please, Corrine. You, of all people, should know how it feels.”

Corrine hated having her situation conflated with Casey’s. But she did need her help.

That night they had dinner at Bouley, their traditional destination on February 14, only a few short blocks from the apartment, although their transit was complicated by the residual ice and snow of Tuesday’s storm.

After they’d settled into their usual table, the sommelier handed Russell the wine list while she examined the menu, looking for greenery and simplicity amid the elaborate compositions, oblivious to the inevitable and incessant wine talk, which to her was like the chatter of starlings. She was stirred from her reverie when Russell said, “I had lunch with Washington.”

“How is he?”

“Not great. But I’m assuming you already know that.”

“Well, yes, I guess so.”

“So you knew about this thing he was having with Casey?”

“At some point, yes, she confided in me.”

“I can’t believe you never told me about this.”

“It was in strictest confidence.”

“I’m your husband. We’re not supposed to have secrets.”

“Oh, come on. You don’t have any secrets from me?”

“I can’t think of any.”

“I doubt that.”

“And this involves my best friend.”

“All the more reason not to tell you. I’m sorry, but I was in a terrible position.”

“I felt like an idiot. He just assumed I knew.”

“Well why didn’t he tell you if he’s your best friend? You speak to him practically every day. What the hell do you two talk about, anyway? Sports? Recipes? Indie rock bands? This is what never ceases to amaze me about men, this masculine code forbidding any discussion of emotions, or anything that’s actually important.”

She’d delivered some variation of this speech a hundred times, but at this point she could see it was effective.

“We wait until it’s important,” Russell said, though his indignation seemed largely rhetorical at this point — the argument driven more by inertia than conviction. “And maybe he assumed that I’d be judgmental, that I wouldn’t approve.”

“So how is he?”

“He’s chastened.”

“He should be.”

“He’s staying at the Mercer while she mulls things over. You know, I honestly thought he was over this kind of shit. I mean, there comes a time where you settle into the life you’ve chosen and accept its boundaries and limitations.”

As sensible as this sounded, it also seemed sad and defeatist — as if long-term monogamy was ultimately a function of exhaustion.

“I take it Tom doesn’t know,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Poor bastard,” he said. Then, after a moment of silence: “I’m famished. Let’s order.”

—

Russell ordered a marc after dinner and spread his arms out across the top of the booth in a posture of intoxicated satiation. He was just slightly slurring his words. “So how’s Casey holding up?” he asked, returning to the earlier subject.

“She’s pretty freaked-out,” Corrine said. “Actually, I was thinking about going with her up to Litchfield next weekend, if it’s okay with you.” She hadn’t known she was going to say this until the opportunity had presented itself. It was almost scary how accustomed one could become to deception.

“What am I going to do with the kids all weekend? I’ve got a lot of work.”

She’d hoped this wasn’t going to be hard; at the same time she could feel a kind of imminent relief in the prospect of Russell’s resistance, a sense of the decision being taken out of her hands, of being saved from herself.

“Well, I suspect Washington will have the kids for at least one day that weekend and he probably needs to entertain them somehow. You two could team up.”

He swirled his glass, examining the amber liquid before taking a swig. “Okay, I guess,” he said. He was seldom happier than when savoring a digestif after a good meal.

“How goes the Kohout book?” she asked, suddenly feeling generous, trying to change the subject before he changed his mind, to be curious and open-minded about a matter over which they’d previously clashed.

“It’s good, so far. Very compelling. I’m still waiting for the final pages.”